* Posts by auburnman

1230 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2011

Ofcom: Now's your chance to make Local TV for Local People

auburnman
Trollface

What is the point nowadays?

Finally, the TV infrastructure will be ready to offer the high quality local content to small audiences that 1992 deserves. I just hope that this investment of time and infrastructure isn't superceded by some better and more flexible communication network several years before it gets running...

Lasers battle cattle farts!

auburnman
Joke

Re: possible mitigation

The obvious solution is DANGEROUS GENETIC EXPERIMENTATION(TM!) one-stomached cowaroos with footpads and enormous meaty bulk coming up! Either that or inhumane battery farms that milk the gas energy from cows matrix style.

Government pledges tougher games sales law

auburnman
WTF?

It didn't occur to me

That the various ratings boards can still effectivley censor a game by refusing to classify; I thought the worst they could do was slap an 18+ rating on it. how do the commentards feel about that? I'm undecided; on the one hand it smacks of de facto censorship, but on the other hand the only game I can recall being refused classification in recent times was Manhunt 2 (which apparently was really dreadful.)

Princeton solar researchers take leaf from plants’ book

auburnman

Re: Rough and Smooth

Rough collection surface behind a smooth transparent glass/plastic for practical applications then? Question is can someone turn this research into a practical design without trading off too much efficiency.

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

auburnman

Re: Fixing the leaks has to be done anyway

Er, yes it does. Unfixed leaks will get worse over time, turning into burst pipes and streets with no water supply and emergency roadworks. Every uncontrolled leak contributes to the risk of flood damage in the city. I agree with most of Lewis' points but I dislike the dismissive tone towards repairing the infrastructure.

LG: We're not walking away from Windows Phone

auburnman

It's probably already too late for 'N'. Even if they put out an announcement today that they were reversing every stupid change they had made in the last X months and going back to their old platform or embracing Android, they will never recover the lost goodwill from ditching a platform/sacking developers and their shares would tank because they appear confused and directionless (again.)

Not to mention the $1Bn bung they got from 'M' which has probably handcuffed them to the rail of the Titanic.

UK plc 'needs a chief engineer' - also a chief social scientist

auburnman

You may scoff at "Chief social Scientist"

But unfortunately those in charge have amply demonstrated they need to be told basic shit like "Don't hold the police back when gits are looting and torching businesses" and "Don't advise stocking up on petrol on the verge of a panic run on petrol" (And bloody well know what a jerry can is before advising use of one.)

iTunes fanbois outraged by Apple's sex-life quiz probe

auburnman
WTF?

Of course it matters what the questions are: they help you remember the answers. If you didn't have a memory fault you wouldn't be trying to recover your password would you?

I hate the ambiguity in the default questions same as others here; did I put down the answer to "my first job" as the shelf-stacking I did as a teenager, or my first salaried role when I moved to a city? Much better if you can set your own questions in a fill in the blanks style, i.e. "My first boss was Barry ______."

Everything Everywhere rolls out the 4G astroturf

auburnman

The ASA are more toothless than spineless - they are one of the few quangos with the will to rule against companies. Their problem is they make an almost pointless ruling in retrospect after ad campaigns have already finished (usually.)

Murdoch 'sorry' he didn't shut News of the World years ago

auburnman
Trollface

NSFL

Not Safe For Lunch?

Blackpool ICT boss: BYOD doesn't save money

auburnman

Re: Well, Duh! (I think we need an icon for this)

There is no shit, Sherlock, but I think it gets overlooked sometimes. Wasn't there a "Duh" icon alt texted "Pope Catholic, Bear Woods etc"

auburnman
Pint

Strange turn of phrase

"I don't believe the right reason to introduce a BYOD policy is to make cost savings"

It strikes me as odd to put the policy first and the reasoning second in that sentence. The cynic in me wonders if someone's been told that BYOD is happening and decided to rationalise it after the fact...

Beer icon because the cynic in me and I need to chill out over a cold one...

O2 launches Wallet: Plays pay-by-text card, again

auburnman
Meh

Close, but no cigar

Let me know when I can get the bus or go to the vending machine without fannying around for exact change.

Tablets are the future of the PC, says researcher

auburnman
Stop

'Become the Primary Device' my arse. If they were more convenient most/all of the time then people with tablets would already have made the switch. You do your real work on a proper terminal with a display, keyboard and mouse and/or stylus thingy for designers and the like. Tablets are for showing off, angry birds and reading and replying to docs/emails on the go (most likely in that order of importance.) Of course they will become more prominent as people figure out more things they can do on the go instead of in the office but to seriously suggest a device that eats half it's own screen when you want to type (and rarely gives you the characters you tried to type anyway) will become the main device only implies the suggestion comes from someone who doesn't have any real work to do.

I of course do have real work to do, which is why I waited 'til my break to browse el reg and post... yes, that sounds plausible enough.

Ofcom probes Sky News over Canoe man email hacks

auburnman
Childcatcher

Re: Public Interest...

How old is the 'Public interest' clause anyway? Presumably it predates the era where significant amounts of your personal correspondence can be accessed from anywhere in the world with the right credentials? Would it have covered going through postal mail back in the olden days?

Everything Everywhere begs Blighty to back 4G push

auburnman
Thumb Up

Re: What we need is 3G

Hear hear. EE need to sort out their existing infrastructure before moaning about 4G. Even in the cities it ain't that great - long gone are the days when Orange trumpeted having the best coverage of all the networks.

Top US science wonk wants Grand Challenges and 3D printers for the kids

auburnman
Joke

Re: By ten

Literally by the number ten - they're taking it off the countdown. The verbal just before launch will start "Nine, eight, seven..."

'Selling your citizens to foreigner is not acceptable!'

auburnman
Joke

'Selling your citizens to foreigner is not acceptable!'

I wasn't aware the veteran rock band had moved into people trafficking.

Appeals court cracks open Google AdWords v Rosetta Stone case

auburnman

Not to say that the issue doesn't need examining, and Google probably deserve a hefty slap at least for their ad practices, but surely the Rosetta Stone company have done themselves no favours by using a trademark that has at least one other meaning? If I were to buy ads from Google that displayed on Rosetta Stone searches there's at least a chance I could be a legitimate customer working for a museum. How much responsibilty should Google have for their customers behaviour?

Japanese bank palms off customers with biometric ATMs

auburnman
Joke

Re: Could be worse

Would you like to take out house insurance with your bank today? Do a handstand to decline.

auburnman
Alert

I do love how

many commentards assume there's a hidden army of psychopaths just waiting for the right conditions to begin a spree of mutilation muggings, as if relieving someone of their hand and nonchalantly strolling up to a cashpoint with the aforementioned severed hand would be seen by criminals as the easiest option. Yes, it's technically possible someone could be targeted by an end-of-the-bell-curve nutter, but I very much doubt monetary gain would be the objective of our hypothetical crazy limb hacker.

MS Office coming for Symbian

auburnman
Mushroom

Holy crap

Symbian must still have some life in it if they have supporters this vitriolic. It's almost like I wandered into a Fandroid/iDrone slanging match.

Whisky IN SPAAAAACE: Zero-G Scotch is matured aboard the ISS

auburnman
Pint

Housshton, We havvve porbelem <hic>

The cargo shhip not have the whiksy... whiky... booze on board. Honesht. Better send another one.

No need to apogilise Houshton, you my besht mate you are.

HTC struggling as profits drop 70 per cent

auburnman
Unhappy

Damn shame

I have an HTC desire and other than the limited amount of on board memory I love it. I hope they manage to make a comeback.

Windows XP support ends two years from now

auburnman
Facepalm

This could have been Linux big chance

The Vista debacle put a lot of people off Windows, when I got it with a new PC it finally made me try out Ubuntu. with a little tweaking it was more or less XP with a new face. The problem is most of the Linux crowd have tried to differentiate themselves with the new user interfaces, just like MS is doing. Unfortunatley these new interfaces (from all parties) are almost universally reviled. The Office ribbon, the new Gnome, that interface Ubuntu switched to that got universally slated whose name escapes me - people f***ing HATE all this change for the sake of change.

The Linux crowd could differentiate themselves by NOT differentiating. Have a user interface experience that is as close to XP as they can legally get away with, polish it, and stop dicking with it. then turn attention to the little niggling problems that Linux never seems to get a handle on. I don't have all day to to sort out my printers and wireless dongles; yes I could probably get them running after some forum Googling, but in much the same way as I could probably lose ten kilos after a regime of exercise, that's not going to happen because I don't want to make that effort. Over the next few years many will be thinking about switching away from XP, and it's a real shame that there's no Linux ' more or less XP' that an average user could switch to with a minimum of hassle.

"The year of Linux" is a phrase that has been bandied about for yonks but with the situation Microsoft are creating for themselves it could have finally become reality in recent times. Unfortunately most Linux outfits are running away from success like they have a deadly allergy.

Having said all that, Red Hat are doing all right aren't they? Wonder if someone could convince them that an official 'civilian' distro of RHEL would be good advertising?

Google shows off Project Glass augmented reality specs

auburnman
Meh

Re: Google Asks "What do I want?"

Regrettably I don't think we'll ever get that. Aside from the fact that the interested parties funding the development of these toys are very interested in tracking your every action, the device of our dreams would need to do a lot of tracking of our behaviours to do what we want it to. We want a pocket device that sorts out what we tell it to as good as a human assistant for 90% of tasks, and to emulate human performance it would need to track damn near everything. Look at the issues with Siri.

You want it to remember context? That means logging your conversations, at least short term.

You want it to understand you? That means building up a profile of regional accents and your own voice.

A compromise between having a device that logs everything about you and a device that knows enough about you to be useful will need to be reached, unfortunately the companies with the big bucks are likely to always push one end of that compromise more heavily.

Condom compartment hidden in iPhone case

auburnman
Joke

'Dubbed the “Playa” '

Were they worried 'iPlaya' would cause confusion with the BBC broadcast on demand service?

UK net super-snooping clashes with Euro privacy law - expert

auburnman
Headmaster

Re: Have the tabloids calmed down yet?

I normally let these go, but this is getting to be a repeat offence around here and it's starting to get to me like nails down a blackboard:

LOOSE is a property an item can have, roughly meaning the opposite of tight. Clothing can be loose, your shoelaces can be loose. You cannot be on the 'loosing' side of an argument.

I believe LOSE is the word you are looking for. As in 'Lost the match', 'on the losing side'; 'David Cameron is a useless loser' etc.

Apple slapped with second Siri senility lawsuit

auburnman

I don't think that's entirely fair on some of the petrol queuers - once the panic starts it does make a certain perverse sense to join in if you do need some petrol (obviously those with low tanks, not nutters trying to fill jerry cans). you can be part of the problem, or you can walk round town until the supply chain catches up to the accelerated demand. It's a bit like a run on a bank - if everyone's taking out their cash, taking the moral high ground does you f all good if you can't get money out later.

Gov IT contractors hire staff in India to work on benefits system

auburnman

I think we could borrow a favourite from the government playbook and play the terrist card to get this shut down.

Shouldn't be difficult to lather the redtop rags into an uproar about how "outsourcing our identity data endangers our borders by making it easier for TERRORISTS to forge UK ID's" or some equivalent bollocks. Then just stir until you hear backpedalling.

Bio student thrown in the clink for Muamba Twitter rant

auburnman

Re: Slippery slope..

That's not what was said; the comment was "Feelings should never be protected by laws". Of course intervention is necessary in out of control bullying, but that intervention comes from parents and teachers, not the justice system. There's a difference between 'a dickish thing to do' and 'a crime punishable by imprisonment'. If being mean was a crime we'd all be in jail.

Having said that, where do you draw the line? We have harassment laws to deal with people who go out of their way to cause distress and an atmosphere of fear in their victims which does sound a bit like feelings protected by laws.

At the end of the day, the right to say what we want will always clash with the right to feel safe when nutters get involved. We can't scrap one or the other so we'll always have to try and balance them as best we can.

auburnman

As some lighter relief to the racism issue, his heart stopped for 78 minutes and he's still alive and (serious but) stable? Hats off to the medical team. Fingers crossed Muamba pulls through.

James Cameron back from dive to world's deepest point

auburnman
Thumb Up

I'm curious about what sort of hardening they will need to do on the fibre-optic cable if he wants to drag it with him on his next jaunt.

Also I am getting ready to complain that the most inaccessible spot on the planet has a better connection speed than 90% of blighty.

Game closes 277 stores

auburnman

Re: RBS planning buy-out

It's not an investment, it's a strategy to reduce their losses. I would imagine the 'buy-out' will not cost them anything as they are the de facto owners of the company now anyway. The banks have already lost the majority of the $85M, but if they can restructure the company and sell it on as a going concern, they might get back a (single digit) percentage of what they lost.

I actually agree it was a dumb investment, but it was made a long time ago when they extended credit to a company that couldn't pay it back.

Barclaycard pay-by-bonk fraud risk exposes Amazon's security

auburnman
Trollface

Re: Because

Of course. I forgot cashpoints were a massive failure shortly after their introduction and were withdrawn never to be tried again.

auburnman

what's always bugged me about CVV2 is having the number printed on the card. Why not send the authorisation number to the cardholder like an (unchangeable) PIN#?

CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE

auburnman

Re: I have bought...

And of course if your hard drive you ripped it to goes kaput, you have a convenient non-volatile backup sitting around somewhere, not taking up much space, clearly labelled with artist and album name.

London fire brigade outsources 999 control centre to Capita

auburnman
Joke

Maybe

Cameron is planning to destroy half of London in a massive insurance fraud. Might let us pay for the Olympics. Well, some of it anyway.

Ten... new games you may have missed

auburnman

Re: Binary Domain

I dunno - I loved Vanquish, but the characters in Binary Domain seemed schizophrenic at best. Frequently they would run in front of me while I was shooting bad guys and then have a go at me like it was my fault. Also at seemingly random points they would call me an unprofessional screwup. Presumably something happened to them while I was killing baddies in the other direction, but all you get is the opportunity to apologise or tell them to F' off. Without knowing why they're mad, it all seemed a little pointless. Especially since after a few firefights they're your best mate again anyway.

Still, at least they don't turn on you in the third act and suddenly reveal they had rocket-hoverskates the whole time...

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

auburnman
Joke

Re: Corrollary to CVP?

I thought it was P45?

Rock'n'Roll Racing

auburnman
Unhappy

As a young 'un...

I had saved up all my pennies for ages to buy Rock 'n' Roll Racing for the Sega Megadrive. when I had finally racked up the cash, I went to our local Woolworths only to find they didn't have it in stock. In one of the worst decisions I have ever made and still bugs me to this day, I bought another game instead of going home empty handed.

That game was Rise of the Robots, one of the biggest piles of cack that ever had the nerve to besmirch my Megadrive. When I finally got to play R 'n' R racing years later, I could not believe what I had missed out on (and buying ROTR instead stung all over again.)

Testicle-boiling new iPad ignites fanboi fury

auburnman

Great

Now I want to melt a creme egg onto toast. Only 8 more hours to work...

Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

auburnman
Meh

Re: Price...

Games have cost forty quid or more when they are released since the days of Sonic the Hedgehog. If you can't afford that why not buy older games? A glance at Play.com just now shows brand new copies of Assassin's Creed Revelations for sub twenty quid, and Portal 2 for thirteen quid.

The fact is there are ways of buying excellent games on the cheap AND supporting the people who make them and the shops that actually stock new copies of games. Second hand sales are hurting developers by chipping away at the people who can't wait to play something they created but will try to shirk the premium day 1 price.

That said, the way games are funded and sold could be about to undergo a radical upheaval - look at the companies who are using kickstarter to approach their fans directly for upfront funding and cutting out publishers.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

auburnman

Re: The Matrix 2 (goldcd)

Terminator 3 stands out from the crowd for me. I went to see it in the cinema and distinctly remember there was no dramatic music during the car chase scene. Did the Director actually go to film school?

FAA mulls scrapping in-flight iPad, Kindle ban

auburnman
Thumb Down

You turn off your crap at the start and end of every flight (1) so you don't have any excuse to not pay attention to the safety briefing and (2) the transition from flying to not flying or vice versa is the most dangerous point for anything to go wrong. Given that you've probably had or will soon have ample time sitting about in the airport or on the plane to dick around on Angry Birds, is it such a hardship to be ready to listen to the captain and crew during the very brief tricky bits?

If the FAA want to improve the traveller's lot they can tell the TSA to sort themselves out.

Robotics breakthrough blasts crud from that bit behind the lav

auburnman
Go

Excellent work...

Now build one that can climb the walls and clean the shower tiles and my wallet is yours.

Microsoft: No next-gen Xbox in 2012

auburnman
Thumb Up

Good

when a new generation of consoles come in quality gets worse initially as no-one bar in-house developers has any experience making games for the thing. It seemed to me last time round that the shift to the next generation came just as people were getting to grips with dragging the best performances out of the the XBox and PS2 they were capable of.

When I think of the games that came out for the PS2 at the end of it's run vs some of the early days cack the PS3 had it makes me shudder.

Moore's Law savior EUV faces uncertain future

auburnman

While it's good to see we're breaking through another technological barrier, part of me wants to see hardware advancement stagnate for a brief period in the hope of inspiring companies to focus on efficient software in order to stand out.

Groupon's 'Botox' voucher push breached ad rules – watchdog

auburnman
Childcatcher

Isn't it high time...

The ASA were allowed some teeth? Repeat offenders should run the risk of ever increasing fines or a 'sin-bin' style ban on running any adverts for a length of time. At the very least they should be able to force offending organisations to commit to some sort of internal checking that their ads comply with standards BEFORE running them.

Cambridge boffins build laser 'unprinter' to burn pages clean

auburnman
WTF?

Why? The worst you could do is destroy money, and you can do that without a custom laser. I suppose theoretically a rich person could invalidate some real banknotes in a way that they would pass casual inspections but not be accepted by a bank, maybe to 'poison' the money supply of a person or business. But then I think we're straying into CSI plot territory again...